


A Cup of Kindness

by Kian



Series: Acts of Kindness [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nostalgia, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, minor mention of PTSD, of a kind - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kian/pseuds/Kian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve unlocks the door and lets himself into his apartment. It’s empty, dark, and just as he left it, except for a little more dust settled around the baseboards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cup of Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> Could be taken as a prequel to "You Were A Kindness." Set on the first day of 2014, so this is prior to the events of CATWS, but post-Avengers and Iron Man 3. As ever, this story was un-betaed, so please let me know if anything hurts in a unedited sort of way.

Steve unlocks the door and lets himself into his apartment. It’s empty, dark, and just as he left it, except for a little more dust settled around the baseboards.

It’s also cold, because he can’t conscience the money wasted on keeping it heated when he’s not there. Steve thinks that maybe he should get a plant, something that would give him a reason to leave the heat on, just so it wouldn’t always be so cold. It’ll take most of the night for the temperature to come back up, and while the chill won’t do him any harm, the serum had elevated his core body temperature and the shivering starts right away, which will make him cold and hungry. There are a lot of memories he associates with being cold and hungry, and none of them are things he particularly enjoys dwelling on.

Steve tucks his shield in a familiar place where the front hallway opens into the living area, and moves into the kitchen. He flicks on the kitchen light, which throws strange shadows around the rest of the apartment, across sketches he’s done that hang on the walls and the stacks of books piled neatly in and on every available surface.

He turns on the radio just to have another human voice to listen to, a woman’s voice reading out the headlines in a dry, steady cadence. Steve overturns a can of beans into a pot, checks the age on the chicken in the fridge, then cuts up a head of broccoli and sets it to steam. It’s not the kind of dining anyone today talks about, but it’s familiar and warm and unintimidating.

He eats at the dining table — a placemat set neatly at each of the four sides, the three vacant chairs pushed in neatly — with a napkin across his knee and flatware clinking methodically against his plate.

Steve washes up as the news reaches the top of the hour and cycles through the top headlines for the third time since he’d turned the radio on. The anchor changes, but the headlines remain the same.

Outside his kitchen window, Steve spots flashes of light sparking up intermittently over the streets of the city, little fireworks banging in the night, a percussive counterpoint to the distant noise of car horns and late night carousers and emergency sirens. Steve flips off the light to the kitchen, but doubles back for a beer out of the fridge.

He puts on some music — the old Bing Crosby record they tell him is the best selling of all time — down low, setting the needle on the record just so.

As the warm croon of Crosby’s voice calls to him from the speakers, Steve opens his beer and spies on the rest of the world past his window. A glance at his watch tells him what he’s already guessed: another year turned over, another year begun.

_...Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?…_

Another year further away from himself, a stray thought mutters. Steve takes a sip of his beer and tries to shake off the morose mood that’s settling over him. This year will be better, he decides. 2014 was dawning, he’d completed another mission, successfully keeping people safe from the powers in the world bent on their destruction — even if his mission had prevented him from finding out the news about Tony until the whole episode had passed — and he had the benefit of the kind of life he’d only been able to dream of as a child. If he was a little lonely on nights like this, what of it? He’d do better next year, reach out a little and connect with the people around him more. A resolution, maybe.

_...And here's a hand, my trusty friend, and gie'd a hand o' thine…_

A sudden flash, a firework much closer than the last burst, startles Steve and he commits to an instinctive dive behind the couch — the nearest cover — before he has a chance to think about it. Crouched on the floor, as realization dawns and mortification sets in, the flicker of light plays off the sketch he’d hung opposite the door to the bedroom, where he’d be able to see it every morning.

The Howling Commandos, ranged around a small fire in the last bivouac he can remember them making, deep in the Alps. Gabe is smoking, a contented smile on his face, while Dernier and Monty are leaning into one another, as though sharing a wry remark. Morita is throwing a wad of rolled up bandages at Dum Dum, who has his hands out, gesturing his way through a bawdy story, and Bucky...head thrown back into a laugh, a beautiful look of complete mirth across his face, the barest squint of an eye looking straight out at the viewer — out at Steve — a moment of arrested time when everything was good.

It was a sight that always reminded him of finding the best in the worst times, and — tucked behind the couch in the earliest hour of New Year’s Day, hiding from fireworks — he catches sight of Bucky’s eye and Steve would swear on a stack of Bibles that he can hear the teasing despite the still of his apartment.

Steve smiles back, laughs a little at himself, and gets up, waving to Bucky as he retrieves his dropped beer can, happy only a few drops had spilled onto the floor. He wipes them up with his sleeve, promising himself he’ll make another pass with the floor cleaner in the morning. Beer disposed of, he knocks a knuckle against the shield, another against the wall by the sketch of his friends, and takes himself to bed.

The record finishes quietly in the peace of the living room, before the turntable automatically lifts the needle and switches itself into standby.

 _...We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet, for days of auld lang syne…_

* * *

end

 

 


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